Many consumer devices, such as television sets, set-top boxes, media players etc have infrared (IR) remote control interfaces. Normally, this requires a user with a remote control unit to be in the same room as the device that the user wants to control.
US patent application No 2006/103767 describes a system that makes it possible to use a remote control unit in one room for controlling a device in another room. IR receiver gateways and repeater gateways connected via a network are used. When a receiver gateway detects a first IR remote control signal, it generates a network message with information from the first IR remote control signal and sends the message over the network. The repeater gateway receives the message from the network and generates a second IR remote control signal with information from the message. The receiver and repeater gateways are located in different rooms. A device with a remote control input in the same room as the IR receiver gateway receives and responds to the second IR remote control signal.
Typically a general purpose in-house network is used, that also serves other devices such as personal computers, internet gateways, printers, mass storage devices etc. The network may also be used to pass video and audio between devices in the house. The need to manually configure gateways in such a network for the purpose of enabling IR remote control between different rooms can be burdensome, especially for technically inexperienced persons. This can be partly overcome by the use of broadcast messages for transmitting information from IR remote control signals over the network. This simplifies configuration by avoiding the need to program addresses. However, it also burdens all devices with the task of interpreting the messages and it makes it impossible to keep repeater gateways from repeating messages with information IR commands.